


down in the lime tree arbour

by ennaih (aquandrian)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Christmas fic, F/M, Life Day fic, Smoking, Smut, but in universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 03:43:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8781625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/ennaih
Summary: The Director takes a day off from his duties. Jyn Erso follows.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thescruffynerfherder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescruffynerfherder/gifts).



> Title from _Lime Tree Arbour_ by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

No one seems to see him leave. She might have missed it if not for the small device she had set on the suite door. The Director is on Lankashiir to meet with delegates from Imperial supply planets. And she’s infiltrated officer ranks enough that she manages to include herself in his entourage, one more anonymous uniform conveying datapads and information as the meetings drag on and on. Today is supposed to be private conferencing, each planet representative tying up holonet channels, discussing the Empire’s demands with officials back home. The Death Troopers are in their accommodations, and the Director is supposed to be in his private rooms, reading reports and thinking up ever impossible demands.

So when the little red light flashes, Jyn Erso has no time to do anything but grab the essentials and dash out of the room she shares with two other petty officers. “What’s wrong?” one calls after her but she’s already halfway down the corridor, wishing she had somehow managed to get a camera into the Director’s suite. It might only be some droid delivering food. 

Of course by the time she gets there, the corridor is empty and the door’s closed. Tentatively, she puts a ear to the polished wood. Nothing. 

Jyn swears under her breath and takes a few hasty steps to the nearest window. The palace lawns spread out flat and green below, immaculate in the cool sunshine. At the high walls, a few Imperial guards patrol. And there’s a man with silver hair casually strolling where they don’t see him, across the green lawn to the stone wall. Jyn sees the concealed door, swears, and hurtles to the closest stairwell. 

She spots him some fifteen minutes later in the middle of town, one more human on the streets crowded with families and shoppers and hawkers. It’s impossible that he isn’t recognised but no one gives him a second look. And as she slips through the crowds, getting closer to him, she realises it’s the lack of uniform. No white cape or military insignia, no glossy boots or perfect hair. No rigidly contained posture. 

It’s the middle of two weeks of Life Day festivities, the Empire is clearly turning a blind eye to Lankashiir’s celebrations. And the Director of the Imperial Army is strolling through the shopping district all gaudy with red baubles and greenery strung around windows and overhead across the streets. He has his hands in the pockets of his dark trousers, looking disconcertingly casual and anonymous in a collarless dark jacket and a slightly ragged white top, his hair flopping in silvered strands across his temple. He wanders along the shopfronts, gazing at the luxuries displayed. And Jyn Erso sees the faint smile on his absurdly handsome face as he looks at the decorations. 

He’s enjoying himself.

She follows at a safe distance, weirdly fascinated to be witnessing this. What is this exactly? Imperial officers are expressly forbidden to participate in Life Day celebrations. And even if the lower ranks on remote planets disobey, surely the higher the officer, the stricter the decree. Leaders have to be seen to lead.

But then, as he half-turns and grins at a band of musicians bursting into song in the middle of the street, she remembers. The Director of the Imperial Army was always an unpredictable element. The stories circulate among the officers, half-whispered, of betrayals and secret deals, of his unscrupulous ways, never fully Imperial to be trusted. And she wonders if this is one more secret defiance, a private indulgence. Discarding his office to hide in plain sight. 

He doesn’t see her in the crowds. Now she’s glad she had no time to change out of her casual dark clothes. She looks like just another shopper as she follows him into the stores and boutiques. He examines the cheap knick knacks with as much interest as he does the glittering jewellery, the big colourful toys and the elaborate mechanical sets. She watches him in the golden glow of the shops, the way his mouth curves with pleasure, the sharp light of the blue grey eyes as he touches his fingertips to the sleeve of a red velvet coat. He buys nothing but he looks at everything, and none of the preoccupied people recognise him.

In the sunshine of the afternoon, she follows him away from the shops, amid the easier happier throngs of citizens heading out to the edge of town. There’s a great cluster of vivid green trees in the centre of a field, lush and decorated with so much colour under the perfect blue sky. Jyn breathes in the fresh air, suddenly aware that she hasn’t been in such beautiful nature for so many years. There’s music on the cool breeze, song and so many different scents of food and alcohol and flowers as they approach the Life Day festival village. She loses him for a few minutes, distracted herself by the array of stalls and bowers, by the displays of special delicacies and trinkets.

She finds him at the outdoor pub, carrying a mug of what must be Hoth chocolate, his expression absurdly boyish and gleeful as he bends his head to inhale the fragrant steam. Jyn blinks, not sure whether to laugh or be slightly outraged at such humanity from such an inhuman creature. But damnit, she’s been fascinated ever since they slipped out of the palace and maybe before. So she goes up to the bar and orders the same, and finds a seat just at the periphery of his vision, where she can watch him and think about this.

He sits at one of the long wooden tables arranged around the grove of trees, a lone man amid the families eating and laughing, children loud and scampering around, trailing streamers. She watches as he sips at the chocolate, his expression all concentration as if it’s of great importance how good this particular Hoth chocolate is. He swirls it around in his mouth, somehow still elegant, and then nods with great serious approval. She nearly laughs, so much inappropriate humour. Oh, but it’s a lovely day and maybe she’s charmed by all this wholesome joy. 

Abruptly she wonders where he came from. Is there family somewhere in the galaxy, siblings he’s thinking about now? Did he celebrate Life Day as a child? Strange to think of him as a young boy with parents who worried about him, a young boy decorating a Life Day tree with ornaments, anxious about presents.

Without thinking, Jyn Erso rises and moves through the people and tables to where the Director of the Imperial Army sits and looks up at the great green trees hung with so many decorations.

“Happy Life Day,” she says, seating herself at his table, her drink placed between them. Blue grey eyes sharpen on her, sudden malevolent intelligence in a cold face, and she realises this may be the stupidest most dangerous thing she’s ever done. But then as a muscle tenses in her thigh, she feels the shape of the strapped knife, and remembers she’s just as fucking ruthless as he is. 

If nothing else, she might kill him today.

“And the same to you,” he says with utmost formality. She lifts her drink and they toast each other in silent acknowledgement, a surreal lightness to the moment. The chocolate is honeyed, thick and rich, fumes that rise up into her head. And she sees, feels the deep perverse pleasure in the way his gaze slides down the movement of her throat. She recognises it with some shock. Not nearly enough shock. 

“I don’t really remember my first Life Day,” she says. “Do you?” 

She sees the moment he decides to indulge in this play, the spark of devilry in bright beautiful eyes and the way his face contours with a smile that doesn’t yet curve his mouth. He wraps one hand around the worn stone mug -- it’s not an elegant hand, too broad and big -- and tells her with that certain light in blue grey: “No, I definitely remember mine. It was --” a deliberate pause “-- pretty special.”

“Why?” she asks dutifully, realising with a sort of hedonism that this close, here and now, talking to him, she can just look and look, fill all her senses with all the colours and textures of his face, all the nuances of his expressions. He’s supposed to be this lethally charming man, capable of crushing civilisations with the right emotional manipulation. And now he has that brilliant awful mind trained on her. It’s exhilarating and so very dangerous.

“Oh, you know how it is.” He leans back a little on the wooden bench, the blue sky beyond him, his eyes keen on her face. “Not every planet in the galaxy is this brazen. Or this lucky. I was seven when we had our first Life Day festival. It must have been --” his eyes narrow with memory “-- there must have been some new faction in power. It was the first year we were allowed to celebrate.”

Now his eyes sharpen on her, seeing her once more. “You had many, then?”

She recognises this dance somehow, the weaving of their intellect. “Yes, I think so. My parents --" she says easily and then remembers. It catches in her chest, in her throat, what this man was to her parents. The incomprehensible betrayal of him. As she breathes past the pain, he watches her with those unwavering blue eyes and reaches inside his open dark jacket. “My parents moved a lot,” she tells him, registering the half-truth. “I have all these mixed up memories of celebrating with different people, different families. DIfferent species.”

He lights a cigarra and puts it to his thin lips, some amusing thought slipping through his mind and changing the contours of his face. “I didn’t see the proper Wookiee Life Day until I was, oh, about eighteen. And then --” he laughs soft, wicked “-- then I drank so much I can hardly remember any of it.”

“You must have had lots of friends,” she murmurs, unable to help herself, prodding the memory of her parents in his mind. His brows quirk, the corners of his mouth turning up. He takes the cigarra from his lips and turns it, looks at the burning end. 

“Yes, I suppose.” The blue eyes flick up, unseeing, towards the horizon. “Friends come and go, though.”

“Do they?” Her voice is low. “Are they meant to?”

Orson Krennic smiles to himself, beautiful and dangerous, and then focuses that smile on her. “You haven’t had a friend betray you yet?” His smile deepens as he leans forward a little, elbow on the table, the cigarra dangling elegant and careless between his pale fingers. She wonders suddenly how he smells up close. Maybe he’s all tobacco and malice, bitter and addictive. But here across the table from him, all she smells is fresh air and chocolate and so much life force of the natural world.

“Friends, no.” She blinks steadily, once, tells the truth once more. “My friends are good people. Kind and brave.” His eyes gleam like he’s discovered some secret about her, like she hasn’t given him knowledge freely. “They may not be as … cynical as I am but they’re still trustworthy.” 

He grins. “Brave words. You’re sure then about your cynicism?”

“Tell me about that first Life Day,” she counters, more curious than deflective. That lightning flash quirk of brows again, his face so expressive it’s a marvel he manages to keep any of his own secrets. With so much humour, he tells her, “Oh it was magical, two weeks of more colour and fireworks and fun than I had ever seen. I was only seven, mind.”

“Still,” she says before taking a sip of her drink, responding despite herself to the appeal and warmth of him. 

He flicks the ash off the cigarra. “I remember so many presents, heaps and heaps of them.” He frowns a little to himself. “They weren’t rich, my parents. They must have -- it wasn’t easy for them. But I remember them taking me into shops, asking me what I wanted. I remember so many toys and clothes.” 

There’s a sudden squall of music to one side of the village, a band tuning up, and they both look towards the sound, distracted out of their little world for a few moments. His voice is still weighted with memory. “Where did the credits come from?”

Jyn gazes at him, somehow seeing the youngish parents with their small boy, excited for him. “What was your favourite toy?”

He turns his head to look directly at her, startled pretty eyes with pale brown lashes. “Oh that was Monkey. I already had him.”

“Monkey,” she echoes, absurdly charmed.

He grins, wicked and boyish. “Yeah, Monkey got a new coat that first Life Day. Red velvet, it was. He looked so smart.”

The band they can’t see launches into a deafening joyous song, and the families around them begin to nod and find the words. Orson Krennic glances across at her, quizzical. “Shall we walk?”

“Yes, let’s.”

They leave the stone mugs on the table as they move away from the outdoor pub. Children run around them, the older kids pretending to stroll with stylish nonchalance. Jyn finds herself turning towards the grove of vivid green trees hung with so many pretty things, a weird inviting darkness in their midst despite the bright sunshine. The Director of the Imperial Army smokes and walks beside her, a thoughtful quiet man despite the rakish air about him.

“Did you have a Monkey of your own?” 

Also an absurd man. She smiles a little, glancing away in case he sees it. “Maybe. I know I had some little doll I loved so much. But it wasn’t -- it didn’t protect me.”

“Against the dark?” he asks carefully. 

She looks down at the grass they’re treading, sees their boots muddied at the tips. “The nightmares.” Those came later, when her small world had shattered apart. 

By this man.

She leads him into the cool green shadows of the trees. The music seems so much further now, the grove emptied of children and people all summoned away. Jyn walks ahead, slowly aware that maybe he will touch her now, if only a brush of fingers against fingers. Maybe she wants him to.

“Monkey helped with that,” he says, his tone changed. Now she turns and looks at his face in the dappled forest light. He’s so serious and painfully beautiful. “I loved him for that, you know. He kept me safe at night and I looked after him during the day.” 

Silver brown hair, blue eyes, and she sees the little boy with his wide steady gaze. “Where is he now?” she asks.

The warmth returns to his face, like he was ever incapable of malice. “Safe.” He inclines his head a little, a sort of kindness in his expression. “Which was your best Life Day then?”

She wanders around him as she thinks, groping through her memory, through the years of struggle and loss and bewilderment. “The last year we were a family.” He puts the cigarra to his lips, drawing on it as he watches her and listens. Jyn steps towards him as she speaks, feeling the air around them, feeling the moment crystallise, clear silver blue. 

“My mother and my father together for the last time, we didn’t know it would be the last. They brought in the tree, it was such a small house, the tree nearly filled the room. I remember the fireworks in the sky through the window. The sparkling tree and the sparkling skies.” 

The sight of him is so complex, all the beauty of his elegant features and so much fierce charisma. He smokes to one side and looks out of his averted eyes at her mouth, at her eyes, calculating and yet aware, thrumming with attraction.

“We decorated the tree together, they let me put the star on top. It --” she reaches her hand up to her throat, pleased at the way his gaze falls to her fingers, like he’s fascinated despite himself. Jyn tugs out the black cord from under the placket of her top and says, “It was carved out of a crystal. Like this one.” 

This close he does smell like burning things and addiction and so much deception but that last one doesn’t belong to just him. This close his cigarra smoke curls not acrid but strangely fragrant around her. He breathes her in, and his eyes sharpen blue as she says, “My mother gave me this.”

His hand brushes between them as it rises, shockingly intimate, thrilling her. “Is that right?” he murmurs, and touches one fingertip to the crystal that radiates heat from her skin. There’s knowledge in his eyes, maybe not recognition but something dark and brilliant and dangerous. He turns his face from her and blows out a stream of smoke, frank sexual appreciation in the way he looks at her. Jyn breathes in and takes the cigarra from him, her fingertips brushing his like lightning. It startles him, a narrow inward gasp that makes delight roar through her. 

She keeps her gaze locked with his, aware suddenly of her prettiness, her own allure, as she puts the cigarra to her own mouth, tasting where he’s been, tasting tobacco that’s crisp and fresh somehow. His eyes flare lust, wild, like he would lunge at her but he controls himself with an effort. So she tilts her chin up and blows the smoke straight into his face, smiling utter defiance.

He splutters a laugh, darting his head aside and waving the smoke away. It’s loud in the dappled green quiet of the trees, reminding her just how alone they are. Her head bends as she drops the cigarra and grinds it below her heel. There’s the knife strapped to her thigh, visible and reachable. The crystal glimmers against the dark fabric of her top, catching sunlight. Her past, her parents, all the things she could cut into this man for.

“And where is your mother now?” he asks, cool voice and interested eyes. He asks her that and lifts his hand again. He is going to touch her now, she knows that and doesn’t move. 

“Dead.” She says it steadily, so much hatred and lust burning through her at the sight of him. “Killed by a man who said he was our friend.”

Orson Krennic’s blue eyes crinkle into a vile beautiful smile as he touches her breast. 

It is and isn’t a shock, but she’s registering the way his fingers shape to the curve of her flesh. It’s not a claim, it feels like an appreciation still, and oh, with that glitter of speculation, it’s definitely a dare. 

She never could resist a dare. So she steps in and slides the flat of her palm up along the centre of his chest, dragging the thin fabric as she goes, feeling the flinch of hard flesh beneath. It’s all the signal he needs. 

He grabs the hem of her top with both hands, she puts her arms up and lets him drag it up off her. He doesn’t kiss her mouth, she doesn’t let him, instead grabs his face when she can and licks up the bold sharp contour from mouth to temple. A shocked rough sound from his throat, and then he does kiss her. It’s wild and like they’ve violated every rule in the galaxy, it feels like a thousand betrayals and breaking of oaths to her. He tastes like chocolate and honey and that same twisted tobacco, three kinds of addiction in one intoxicating rush. She puts her hands in his messy hair and kisses him back, vicious and wet and open, pushing herself up against him, bare breasts and knife-strapped thigh and her cunt wet and throbbing inside her clothes.

“Here. Now,” he mutters between them, the air so hot. His hands are beautiful and disrespectful on her, on the smooth skin of her back, smoothing up her sides, learning her flesh. “Fuck me,” he insists and kisses her like he would devour her, one hand cupping her chin and the other holding her right breast, his thumb scraping her tender nipple. “Fuck me now.” 

She says yes in her mind, a thousand times yes. But out loud she gasps and gives herself over to his mouth sharp on her throat, to his hands pulling her up against him. Her head falls back on her neck, the shimmer of sunlight and green leaves above as he bites down her throat to her collarbone, and then the wet open slide of his mouth is on her naked breast. Jyn cries out and looks down at his silver brown hair trapping her fingers, sees the delicate brown lashes over blue glimmer as he closes his mouth on her nipple. Hot and wet and oh teeth, teeth. She cries out again, twisting her fingers in his hair, and loving it, the unabashed honesty of his lust and his brutality, that he matches her in this, he of all awful people in this cursed galaxy.

They could be discovered, she knows it at the back of her mind. There are families and children just beyond the vivid green trees protecting them. And she so doesn’t care. She wants the earthy fuck he’s promising now, for him to lay her down on the forest floor and drive into her, all flesh and cigarra scent and silver hair flopping across his brow. 

But he pulls off her and straightens up in a rush of blue eyes and hot breath, gets one hand into her bound hair and says, “Take your clothes off. I want you naked.”

Jyn nearly says no and yes in the same damned moment, caught by the image but also furious at his presumption. “Fuck you,” she snarls and pushes him so his back hits the tree trunk. “You don’t tell me what to do.” He laughs back at her, joyful at her defiance. And she knows she could go to her knees now, undo his trousers and suck him off. Maybe she wants it too. Certainly he’s expecting it from the way his eyes glitter at her now and his hands go to the fastenings of his trousers. She knocks his hand aside and puts her palm against the bold shape of his cock against the fabric. “Is this what you want?” It’s a taunt and he hears it, teeth glinting in a feral grin. 

“This?” she asks as she kneels on the springy moss and undoes his trousers. Orson Krennic laughs shakily, tilting his head back as his body trembles all the way under his skin. She feels it, recognises the jittery lust that threatens to break her apart too. Fiercely glad, she uncovers the hard rude length of his cock and looks at it for one long considering moment. 

She’s seen prettier cocks, embellished ones, alien ones even. And as he groans and looks down at her, wanting so badly his desperation radiates off his hot skin, she smiles and leans forward to lick the glistening tip.

A ragged cry from his throat but she’s realised in an instant she likes the taste of him, his fluid and his cockflesh. She had intended just a tease, to madden him like that, but now she lurches forward and swallows him whole. Or at least she tries and chokes, pulling off and trying again, slower, different angle, willing her throat to open, loving that this means her mouth slides down and tastes him all the way, sucking at the gleam and the salt and the secret heat and hard. He’s swearing above her now, a litany of obscenities like a prayer, his hands petting at her hair like the incoherent animal every man is in this moment. She slides her fingers under the loosened opened waistband of his trousers and finds the contour of his hipbones, holds onto him like that as she presses her nose against dark silvered hair fragrant and secret, and takes his cock into her opening throat. Her nipples are tight and painful in the cool forest air, sunlight on her bare back. She sucks his cock deep and steady, and hears the music in the distance, the sounds of human voices raised in song, the sound of the Director of the Imperial Army saying utterly filthy things as he tries not to fuck her mouth. 

Jyn curls her fingertips, scratches the skin of his hipbones with her nails, and he flinches. She’s pulled to her feet, his dark jacketed arm like steel across her ribcage, and she’s swung around, catches her hands on the rough bark of the tree trunk. “That’s quite enough,” he hisses. “My fucking turn now.”

“ ** _My_** turn,” she corrects, unable to resist, laughing as he reaches around and unsnaps her trousers, pulling them down. Of course they catch on her strapped knife, of course he finds it now, and she glances back to see him grin at her as he takes it off, casting the holster and weapon amid the grass and fallen streamers. 

“Later,” he says to her in some cryptic promise, dizzying her with the inadvertent reminder that yes, later she can kill him. Now though, now he’s on his knees between her spread legs, her trousers caught at her boots, and his cock is exposed and hard red, pearling at the tip as he slides his beautiful brutal hands up her legs, up to her taut thighs. Jyn moans at how her cunt throbs, so wet already, anticipating the wet of his mouth and the way he’s going to eat her out. They’ve never done this before, they’ve only met today but she knows, she just knows. 

Bent over, arms braced against the tree, she closes her eyes and shudders all the way when he grazes his fingertips along the parting seam of her cunt. She wants him to split her open with his fingers, his tongue and then his cock. Reaching her hand back, she grasps at his hair and pulls, shameless and demanding, making him laugh again before he gives her what she wants. His mouth oh god his mouth. She arches and cries out, shocked at how bold he is. He’s confident even in this, she hates him for it but then she’s twisting on his fingers and shameless in her reactions, like any starlet in a porny holovid. He fucks his fingers up into her, and licks all the intricate folds of her vulva, licks and sucks at her wetness like it’s a taste he wants. A rhythm, of his fingers and her moans, of his mouth finding her clit and working it, tongue and clever lips, a rhythm that makes her cunt clench and clench, wetness slipping from her, onto his face, onto her thighs. The smell of her is thick and rich, maybe that’s why he groans and presses his face up into her cunt, hungry and decadent.

“Oh god,” Jyn gasps, “oh god, stop. Don’t stop. Fuck me now.”

“Yeah,” he says, so much rough desire, getting to his feet behind her.

“Like this,” she insists, turning her face against the tree so the bark scrapes her cheek and the corner of her mouth. 

“Yeah,” he says and drives his cock up into her in one long hard stroke. She cries out, loud enough that he claps his hand over her mouth and presses her against the tree, his breath hot against her temple. It’s glorious, she’s shaking already, delighted at how she feels every inch of his cock inside her. With a moan, Jyn braces her arms and pushes back, on him, against him, wanting to be fucked, wanting the fury and energy. Now, now, keeps chanting in her head, his distinctive voice, her violent desire. 

Orson Krennic holds her bare hips with his bare hands, and starts fucking her steady hard, deeper and deeper until she know she’s going to be sore tomorrow. But then she’s wetter and wetter, and the head of his cock is hitting her sweet spot, rippling so much pleasure through her, so much heat going under all her skin, flooding her head, her brain with delirium. She likes that she turns into an animal in this, that she only wants to fuck and be fucked, feel and be felt. Her palms are scraping against the bark, the crystal is swinging free, casting tiny reflections on her face. He leans over her, guiding her hips against his, and moves one hand to her breast, then both over both. It feels wonderful, startlingly so, to be held like this, completely claimed. His breath is in her hair, the soft fabric of his top slipping against her back, the cuffs of his jacket rasping against the skin on her ribs. They’re both sweating now, the smell hot and fresh, and not stopping, not stopping until she realises something.

She can’t see his eyes like this.

So she twists away, glad at how he snarls with shock and lunges for her. A blur of green and sky through foliage, and she has him on his back on the forest floor, blue eyes glittering fury up at her. “Shush,” she says, laughing down at him, and then his face changes, red mouth open, pale lashes descending as she sinks onto his cock, and he groans and pulls at her hips. “Yes, fuck, yes.”

“Look at me,” she commands, breathless as she braces herself on his chest and moves hard on him, the same relentless driving rhythm that has his cock thrusting up inside her, making her come in small constant orgasms so her cunt is soft and wet and tightening tightening around him. “Look at me,” she says, feeling almost violent, and he does, gasping and responding to her rhythm, the beautiful eyes bright and intense. His hands move from her hips to her waist, reach for the bare curves of her breasts, and she leans forward so he can grasp them with his rude blunt fingers. There’s no laughter now, no malice in his blue grey eyes, just breathless disarming sincerity, all sensation, so utterly present in the moment with her. He sees her, she feels it, and she falls forward on his chest, wishing she had undone her hair so it could fall around their faces. She leans down and licks his gasping lips, so he can grasp the small of her back and her nape, urging her to fuck him faster and harder. 

But she pushes his arms away, wants to be free and upright on him so she can close her eyes and feel the green trees around them, the sunlight slipping through the leaves to touch her bare skin and upturned face as she fucks him. The crystal bounces against her collarbone, silvery hot, and she knows he’s still watching her, looking at her face and her breasts and her throat, grasping at her where he can with such greedy male hands. She feels like some carnal woodland creature, some female deity infused with the life force of the season, of the planet. It’s absurd and delirious and everything she wants in this moment, vibrating with so much energy. And just like that, she hears him in her head. He wants her to look at him now. 

Jyn opens her eyes and looks down at the Director of the Imperial Army, nearly remembers, nearly wonders if she’d ever forgotten. But in the next instant, he’s rolled them so she’s on her back on the cool damp ground, the scent of crushed grass rising sharp around them. And memory doesn’t matter anymore because he’s blocking out the world, because all she sees is blue eyes and green foliage beyond, sunshine and silvered stranded hair slipping forward over his brow as he spreads her knees wider and pushes his cock back into her. Ankles shackled by her trousers, she digs her bootheels into the ground and arches as he fingers her clit, as his cock finds her sweet spot. He watches her with such intensity as he fucks her, so invasive she wants to close her eyes and let him use her. But too much pride and too much responding lust, too much that makes her reach up and dig her blunt nails into the dark fabric of his jacketed shoulders, wanting to pull him down to her and take his mouth, take all of him into her. He groans and braces himself on one arm by her head, his lips crooked and open, wet and red inside, and before she can put her fingers in that mouth, he changes his rhythm. 

He’s fucking her slow and deep, unbearably slow and so deep she can’t think, she can only gasp and shake as he drives her closer to that perfect orgasm. It’s completely unfair, completely intoxicating, turns her into a sinuous moaning creature under him, all undulating breasts and hips and thighs, her cunt a slippery voracious ache pulling him ever deeper, clenching harder and harder, until she’s coming, pleasure an endless series of colour bursts through her blood and flesh. Her back arches off the forest floor, her fingers curl into the soft damp ground, crushing grass and leaves. Glimpses of green and sunlight, of soft mouth and lined skin, and all she feels is flame like a glorious spreading conflagration right through her, soaring her high and letting her float down slow ever so slow and delicious like some small spark of crystal.

It feels like forever before Jyn remembers where she is and what she’s just done with whom. The Director of the Imperial Army, the man who destroyed her little family, lies heavy on her, his face hot and breathing against her neck. His entire body covers her, solid and male. And when she turns her head, she sees the dull gleam of the holster and knife in the grass. Within reach. 

But she doesn’t. She lets him sigh and roll off her onto his back. 

She could kill him any time. This keeps repeating in her head, presses on her like the taste of his mouth, of his cock, the feel of him up inside her. 

Jyn Erso stands and pulls her trousers up, her mind all fractured like reflections from the crystal against her collarbone. He’s marked her with his mouth, she sees it on her breasts and feels it on her throat. And she knows as she glances around for her discarded top, she knows if she looks at him, she’ll want to mark him in ways he will never recover from. When she’s clothed and strapping her knife back to her thigh, he’s sitting up, watching her in silence. Is he going to try to kill her now, eradicate anything or any person that could be a liability, some perceived weakness?

Her hand on the knife hilt, Jyn glances over. His clothes are back in place, the only signs of difference are the swollen redness of his mouth and the violent mess of his silver brown hair. He stares hard at her and then something changes, like a switch has flipped. He glances away, getting to his feet, dusting himself off. Suddenly it’s like she is no longer a threat. That’s galling. It almost makes her want to step forward and put her blade at his throat, tell him exactly who she is and why she will be the last thing he sees before he dies.

But maybe that’s not the point. In a surreal lightness once more, Jyn straightens her top and heads out of the grove. Not a word, not a backward look. He lets her go, and she returns to the palace, not sure whether to be furious or bewildered.

Nothing makes sense anymore. So she keeps her head down for the next few days, pretends to be no more than a petty officer running errands for the Lankashiir gathering. Beyond the stone walls, the Life Day festivities continue. Within the palace, the Director attends meetings she never sees, and she ignores every alert from the device set on the suite door. She can’t bring herself to attend to any damned mission. 

Maybe she’s broken everything beyond repair.

Back on the flagship, she gains access to the Advanced Weapons Research Division. It’s one step closer to finding out where they store the plans and it's taken weeks to get this far. And a few days after their departure from Lankashiir, she comes back to her bunk at the end of shift to find the shape of something tucked between pillow and cover sheet. Jyn knows before she sees. 

It’s Monkey. A soft collapsed rag toy of worn brown material and an absurd stitched face. She clutches him in one hand and makes her way out of the officer quarters, her mind one endless roar of disbelief and confusion as she moves through the corridors. It’s a thousand betrayals all over again, a thousand more impossible things she can’t bear to contemplate because they're too absurd, unimaginable.

And yet she has to know.

Outside the Director’s residential quarters, she pauses at the sight of the Death Troopers flanking the sliding doors, and then strides forward. They don’t say anything, it’s like she’s invisible. But the doors open and she enters the gleaming white and durasteel rooms.

The Director of the Imperial Army is sitting on his desk, one booted foot on the edge of a chair. The cape hangs from a stand to the side, the white jacket displayed like a parody of military elegance. And he sits there in his dark trousers and a grey singlet that bares beautiful freckled shoulders, his elbow on his knee, silver hair flopping over a brow, as he smokes.

She catches her breath, no idea whether to kiss him or hurt him.

Orson Krennic grins at her through the smoke, gleaming blue eyes and glinting teeth. “Monkey found you, then,” he says, putting the cigarra aside in a little steel saucer.

She takes in a quick breath, glancing down at the soft toy in her fist. Monkey. The one evidence of the scared little boy in this terrifying man, the one sign of tenderness. She raises her eyes slowly back to the man who watches her closely, his mouth tense like weirdly this matters to him. 

She knows he’s dangerous. She knows he cannot ever be trusted. That to kiss him is addiction and violence and depraved irredeemable lust. 

So she takes those few deliberate steps forward til she stands before him. And he reaches towards her thigh, unsheathes the knife. One long moment of consideration, and he offers it to her, hilt first. “Now? Is this your chance?”

Jyn Erso breathes in. She takes the knife and offers him the soft worn toy. “He belongs with you, doesn’t he? I thought I better return him.”

Clear blue eyes unwavering, he closes his hand over hers. “And you? Where do you return to?”

She shrugs with one shoulder, the corner of her mouth turning up. The knife slides back into its holster. “I don’t know,” she says honestly. She puts her free hand on the side of his face, the tip of her thumb finding the soft crooked curve of his mouth. “I’ll decide another day.”

His eyes flare with something like understanding. And she kisses him, their hands clasped together around tenderness.

She may kill him yet. Today is not that day.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of you may recognise Monkey from a certain ep of _Who Do You Think You Are_. I couldn't resist.
> 
> And this is what Krennic looks like: 


End file.
